Choices to be made

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Eric Shirt and Associates, a consulting firm in the area of health and nutrition, is hosting a conference entitled Nutritional Pathways to Health & Healing: Canadian National Conference. It will take place in this city from April 27 to 30.

"This is our first conference ever. We are going to have a Doctor Bannock, who will be speaking on cellular nutrition. He is going to be talking about degenerative diseases and how they start at the cellular level. They start in one or two ways: either the cells die from taking in too many toxins or they are malnourished and they no longer do the work they were designed to do, and as a result this often leads to chronic degenerative diseases and it is wide-spread in the general community," he said.

Shirt said that most of us tend to think that we are not malnourished because we are eating a lot. But he said we are undernourished and starving because we are not eating the right kinds of foods and, as a result, a lot of us are finding that we are slowly becoming obese and developing health problems.

"The body will do everything that the Creator wants it to do, which is growth, repair, and maintenance, if it has the right fuel. But if it does not have the right fuel, it cannot do the work it is suppose to do, and as a result it begins to break down and that is what is known as chronic degenerative diseases, [as well as] heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, mental illness,

"And all these diseases are currently plaguing a lot of our communities. The signs are so widespread, but so many people do not make the connection."

Eric Shirt said that it took the organization about six months to put together the conference and they are expecting about 600 people there, as well as Dr. Roy Strand, a nutritional specialist, Patrick Holford, best-selling writer and spokesperson on nutrition, Melissa Diane Smith, an Arizona-based nutritionist and health educator, and Bill Erasmus, regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations.

"People are beginning to realize and say 'Listen, what we are doing is not improving the health in Aboriginal communities.' For instance, last year 51 per cent of the health budget was spent on pharmaceuticals by Health Canada on Indian health. So we are using more and more of these drugs, but this is not getting Aboriginal people healthy. As a matter of fact, we are building more and more health centres and these health centres have become huge pharmaceutical dispensing machines. We are finding that once you become a client at one of these centres and begin to take the drugs, you stay a client until you die and that is not optimal health. What we are going to talk about is how do we maintain optimal health? And we are bringing together experts most knowledgeable about these issues. For example Dr. Bannock, he is a nutritional consultant doctor to Sting, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Elton John and members of the Royal Family. And look at his clients. They are older than us. For example Mick Jagger can dance longer than us. What makes that happen? It is the nutrition, and they get the best advice."